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DIY Map Quote Art

Make this easy personalized map art idea for a creative and sentimental way to decorate your home. Instructions on how to print on your map included!

Hi, I’m Julie from Sum of their Stories and I’m happy to be back to show you how I made an easy piece of map art for our home. When we moved house a few months ago I came across a couple of old map books, road atlas’s from those days before Sat Nav’s. One from 1999 and one 2007! Despite being in complete “clutter clear out” mode I held onto them knowing I wanted to try some map art for our new home.

This was really easy to make and can be completely personalised, you can have whatever words you want.

To make one you will need:

A picture frame, mine is a super cheap NYTTJA one from IKEA

An old map book or road atlas. If you don’t keep everything like me you could try a charity shop, thrift store or second hand book shop. Or even just print something from the internet if you can’t find an old book.

Low tack masking tape (decorators tape), washi tape will work too.

A piece of paper, scissors, computer and printer

First I pulled out the map book page of where we live and using the plastic from my picture frame as a template cut it to fit my frame, with our city kind of central (ish)

Next I headed over to Picmonkey to make my words. If you don’t know how to use the design option on Picmonkey head over to my Personalised Gift Tags post where I’ve explained in more detail. It’s really easy, you click on design and Pickmonkey gives you a nice blank square to work on.

Choose a font you like, mine is Black Jack and type in your words, quote or saying. This can be whatever you like. If you want to use mine you can just right click on the image below and save it to your computer.

Save your Picmonkey image then open up Word or Publisher (either will do) and insert your image. Play around with the size of the image (always drag from the corner – we all know that. right? So your writing won’t be distorted) You want it the right size to fit nicely in your frame. Centre it on your paper too, just to make life easier.

Print it out. AT THIS POINT WATCH CAREFULLY WHICH WAY IT COMES OUT OF YOUR PRINTER. You’ll see why in a moment!

Now tape your map centrally over the printed words. I held mine up to the window so I could position it exactly where I wanted it to be, harder to photograph than you’d think!

Then hold it in place with tape. Make your tape nice and smooth, you don’t want it getting caught up in your printer.

Now just run it through the printer again. Just think for a moment about which way your printer takes the paper. On mine I had to put the map paper in face down. Pay special attention to which way it prints. On my first attempt my words printed on the map beautifully but upside down. Ops!

Luckily I had saved both map books and had a second chance. I make these mistakes so you don’t have to! If in doubt, write on a bit on scrap paper and put it through your printer to test. You SHOULD have the words in exactly the same place again, but this time on your map.

Peel off the tape and pop it in your frame. Ta Dah!

This is forming part of a larger wall of art in our house that we call “The Wall of Wisdom”. It’s one of my most favourite projects ever, I’m so happy with how it’s turned out! You can read all about it over on Sum of their Stories here and see this Map Quote Art picture in it’s home surroundings.